Ahead of National Recycle week next week, Sun International’s Table Bay Hotel has launched an exciting campaign to inspire green consciousness among employees and set an example of good practice for travellers and businesses that are looking to take steps to reduce their impact on the environment.
Employees have been invited to bring a plant to be planted and nurtured in the hotel’s renewable garden. The best grower will win a recycled potager garden for their home. The Table Bay will also be implementing a revitalised campaign to communicate advice for living more resource-efficient lifestyles and highlight the impact of environmental savings in a more accessible way.
According to, Sherwin Banda, general manager at The Table Bay Hotel, the campaign, which will run throughout recycling week in-house, is just a small part of a muchlarger and more long-term waste management strategy that the Table Bay is becoming known for.
“Waste management is not new to the operating agenda of our hotel, and it forms a vital component of our overall environmental management system. However, what we would like to achieve during recycle week is to remind people, both internally within our business and our guests and visitors, of the importance of being aware of the impact that waste can have on the environment,” says Banda.
Since June 2013, The Table Bay Hotel has recycled in excess of 3.2 tons of cardboard, 1.7 tons of plastic and 7.4 tons of glass. The total amount of waste that was recycled in this period amounted to 12.4 tons of waste. 15.9 tons including other e-waste, scrap metal and paper.
“We are very proud of our waste management results so far but we plan to continue improving the proportion of waste that we recycle and look forward to significantly better figures next year,” says Vincent Plaatjes Head of the specially formed Environmental committee at the hotel.
According to Plaatjes, much of the waste created in hotels stems from either food- and beverage-handling (generating materials such as packaging and food waste, aluminium cans, glass bottles, corks and cooking oils), or from the housekeeping department (creating waste such as cleaning materials and plastic packaging). Measures to deal with these issues have been initiated in terms of separation of waste, plastic, glass,cardboard.
Another major way in which The Table Bay hotel reduces waste at source is by running towel and linen reuse programmes.
“Inviting guests to hang their towels back on the rack for reuse, or not to have their bed linen changed every day, can save enormous quantities of water, energy,detergent and, of course, the detergent packaging that ends up as waste. Ofcourse, as a five-star establishment, we leave this entirely up to the guests discretion but it has been encouraging to see the results of this campaign,” says Banda.
